Tomorrow I will meet you at the turn of the time, steal you away from your mother and sister and wish you away to a small creek where we will camp and hound and dig and hammer away at river rock and quartz, and with any luck we will celebrate your 8th year with a gem that won't require more tumbling than our bodies can bear.
I myself once turned 8, back in 1981, and in many ways it was the last birthday I ever celebrated, still very convinced that I remain 8 years old, will in fact leave this Earth as an 8 year old. It was my final year as the man of the house, and the year I would say goodbye to all the boys and girls I grew up with. The last year I would give away my trust and friendship so very easily, with no expectation of return. In many ways, a sad year, but the foundation for the very, very smart man I've since become.
I would warn you of us men, however, who are far too smart for our own good, always trying to convince you that pain has some sort of nutritional value, a necessity for building strong bones. And at some point you will even find yourself laughing at some cruelty, at the expense of another's dignity and pride, out of weakness, because we're not so good as to walk faultless among our friends, but in the privacy of your room, I know you well enough to know you will feel terrible about it afterwards. I myself am not so nearsighted as to raise a perfect child in such an imperfect world. I would never do that to you, Tristan. Don't prove me wrong by turning out too terribly good.
* * *
You ask me my middle name, and I tell you, and you wonder about it. It's my father's name. It's the only thing he left me. When my grandfather died, I stole one of his pocket knives, he had dozens. Simple, twin blades with bone handles. Elegant little knives, good for nothing more than whittling and occasionally snipping tomatoes from the vine. I wanted very much to make him happy when I was small, though I myself was good for little more than remaining very quiet underneath the fort, a bed sheet thrown over the kitchen table, and pulling on the knob of the cigarette vending machine that graced the Pizza Inn entrance in Waco.
It stuns me that he wouldn't come searching for you. The wonders you would do for his vanity; he, such a vain and pretty man, fathered several girls, I believe, after he left, pretty little blondes, like he wanted, pretty little blondes like his own mother. Fair, pale children, much like you. I see all of you together sometimes when I cross White Pass in the autumn, the tamaracks dropping their gold onto pockets of premature snow. Those trees that have resisted the natural cycle of fire for generations now face extinction, the result of man's interference, the unintended consequence of the helping hand. Like social services for Mother Nature, I suppose, gone tragically awry, as social services so frequently do.
* * *
It is my turn for questions. I ask you what you would like, if you could have anything, and you say, "I wish I could hypnotize people. To make them do what I want."
I, of course, think this would be a most wondrous gift, and I appropriate this daydream for my own, since I am your Government, the 'Me' S of A, and I have certain Eminent Domain privileges over the children in my household. But I bear evil intentions, because with my hypnotic powers I would find the man who brought you and me into this world, and I would deliver, of all things, a kindness.
I would erase from his memory the concept of pain.
And then I would hide behind the bushes until that first sensation rose up within his cirrhotic gut and giggle as he tried to figure out this new idea.
What does pain feel like to a full-grown man if he's never felt it before?
I would imagine it would be quite awful. Disconcerting at least. I bet he might even cry.
I am a little sorry that you come from a bit of a faulty line, but if it makes you feel better, I had no say in my own lineage, either. It's not the kind of thing you can control, unlike the state of your room, WHICH LIES ENTIRELY WITHIN YOUR POWERS. This has presented such a problem to mankind throughout its spotty history that I am certain with the advent of technology one day we will figure out a way to ask our children if they'd like to be born well ahead of the deed. We will communicate with your future self, probably through a creepy looking transistor radio, and will eagerly await a positive outcome. We will answer all sorts of questions for which we have uneasy answers.
"Will you be kind to me?"
"Yes, of course we will."
"Will you buy me lots of toys?"
"We will spoil you beyond any rational limit."
"Will you love me, at my worst?"
"My god, child, will we."
"Will you give up your bad habits, so that I might have a good role model?"
"I'm sorry, the transmission's breaking up, son. We're gonna need that answer now. Do you want to be born or what?"
This could perhaps be the downfall of the species. Because the SMART ones will say, 'No. I do not ask to be born.' And the planet will be left with cities full of fools, or people raising their own clones, saying, 'Now listen to me, ME, you're getting a second chance at life, so you'd better not make MY mistakes, and for god's sake, you'd better not wind up WORSE than I did. Criminy."
* * *
And this fall I shall see you again in the tamaracks, a little taller than last year, bark ever so slightly thicker, and you will have held onto the golden leaves longer than I had imagined possible.
* * *
Every time someone tells me 'we should agree to disagree,' I always respond by saying, 'I disagree,' which always makes them very angry, and then I laugh, because this is my favorite joke, and the irony just kills me.
Every time I am presented with a touching story of a father and son, I look around the theater and wonder at the display of emotion, the effect still somewhat difficult for me to grasp. Again with the irony.
Every time someone points to your photo on my desk and asks me, 'Is that your son?,' I pause just long enough so that they might be as suspicious of my answer as I sometimes am. Eight years, sadly, has proved insufficient for me to develop ownership of these feelings of responsibility. Earlier this year, I had to attend your teacher/parent conference by myself. You should have seen me. I sat across from your teacher as though I were a common purse snatcher being grilled by the lead detective on a serial homicide case. These are my actual thoughts:
"THIS IS WEIRD. NO WAY IN HELL AM I THE PARENT IN THIS SCENARIO. ACT COOL! ACT COOL! YOU'RE TOTALLY NOT ACTING COOL! SHE JUST ASKED YOU A QUESTION! HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT SHE ASKED? JUST NOD! SHE LOOKS CONFUSED NOW! STOP NODDING! SHAKE YOUR HEAD! SHAKE YOUR HEAD!"
"Tristan is a great kid. Everyone in class adores him."
I may have shaken my head, even at this. I'm sorry. I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I have no problem sharing you with others, I do not know how to discuss this uncomfortable relationship. That you might find yourself pulled and drawn in directions that lead away, even if ever so slightly, is the answer to my question above. I know very well what it's like for a full-grown man to be reminded of the pain that was once erased from his memory. It is very much like standing your rooted ground in a forest fire, exacerbated by the knowledge that it did not have to be this way. That you once made an effort to avoid this fiery outcome.
* * *
And yet, I cannot deny my belief that years from now, I will still see you in those tamarack stands, perhaps one of the last remaining groves, one of the very few trees that survived every great fire. It will be harder to see you outside of autumn, when your leaves turn gold and you show the world just how much you truly stand out from the rest.
What I'm trying to say, Tristan, is that all that effort wasn't just a wasted irony.
* * *
Last month, you turned your ankle very badly, and I urged you to get up and walk it off, and even went so far as to lift you to your feet, and you cried out, and tried, a little, but in the end wound up crawling to your room. In the morning your foot was swollen nearly completely immobile, and I called in sick and wanted very badly to die and to hurt myself in some profound way, to scar the idiocy of my indifference onto my face. I carried you to the car, and I drove you to the doctor, and I carried you through the hallways, from the examination room to the X-ray lab, and back again. And you wore the biggest smile, fascinated with the X-ray machine, and you swore you would one day be a scientist, and the lab technician smiled broadly, and you smiled again as I carried you back to the car and I wanted to die again, and the more ice cream I bought the more you smiled and the more you smiled the more I wanted to die, again, goddamn me. You asked me to make you laugh, and I sang those old songs from the Hundred Acre Wood and swerved dangerously on the road and tried not to think of the little black rain clouds hovering over the honey tree.
* * *
In a few days, we will have forgotten that we enjoyed our yearly celebration of your entry into our lives with a trip to a small creek where we set up our tent and walked among the river rocks in search of pyrite and agates. We will forget that we defied nature by watching movies inside the tent. We might even forget that for at least a part of the day, we found ourselves bored, and that the gesture was perhaps more than a little overblown. But I assure you that we will also overlook the imperfections as the years pass, and that these days we spent will find exaggeration under the lens. That they will someday stand apart in our memory like those ever-shrinking groves of tamaracks. That I will find this place when the turning of my time returns me to my own 8th birthday. That I will root myself here and stand with you against whatever conflagrations our good intentions could possibly ignite.
